Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:26:13.593Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The closed-class vocabulary as a closed set

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2015

Jill Chafetz
Jill Chafetz*
Affiliation:
Vanderbilt University
*
Division of Hearing and Speech Sciences, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, 1114 19th Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37212
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Children who have normal language development are aware of the distinction between closed-class and open-class words at a very early age. In order to test to what extent children know the closed class to be, in fact, closed, 104 children aged 3 to 5 years participated in a sentence repetition task. Each sentence contained a nonsense word that fulfilled either an open-class or a closed-class function. Children were more likely to repeat sentences correctly when the nonsense words functioned in open-class, rather than in closed-class, contexts. In addition, older children correctly repeated more sentences containing nonsense words that functioned in closed-class contexts than younger children. This last result shows a mechanism by which children may acquire new closed-class words. The theoretical implications of the results are also discussed relative to children with specific language impairments, especially in terms of their reliance on semantic value in word acquisition.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , July 1994 , pp. 273 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Bradley, D. C., Garrett, M. F., & Zurif, E. B. (1980). Syntactic deficits in Broca’s aphasia. In Caplan, D. (Ed.), Biological studies of mental processes. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Brown, R. (1973). A first language. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camarata, S. M., & Nelson, K. E. (1992). Treatment efficiency as a function of target selection in the remediation of child language disorder. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 6, 167–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, S. (1978). The child as word learner. In Halle, M.Bresnan, J., & Miller, G. (Eds.), Linguistic theory and psychological reality (pp. 265–293). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chafetz, J., & Gordon, P. (in preparation). Distinctions of vocabulary type in children’s sentence processing.Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. A. (1957). Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connell, P. J., & Stone, C. A. (1992). Morpheme learning of children with specific language impairment under controlled instructional conditions. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 35, 844–852.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Egido, C. (1983). Children’s word judgments: Evidence for the open-closed vocabulary distinction (Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, No. 22). Stanford University, Department of Linguistics, Stanford, CA.Google Scholar
Friederici, A. D. (1983). Aphasics perception of words in sentential context: Some real-time processing evidence. Neuropsychologia, 21, 351–358.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gerken, L. (1987). Telegraphic speaking does not imply telegraphic listening (Papers and Reports on Child Language Development, No. 26). Stanford University, Department of Linguistics, Stanford, CA.Google Scholar
Gerken, L., & McIntosh, B. (1993). Interplay of function morphemes and prosody in early language. Developmental Psychology, 29, 448–457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gleitman, L. R., & Wanner, E. (1982). Language acquisition: the state of the state of the art. In Wanner, E. & Gleitman, L. R. (Eds.), Language acquisition: The state of the art (pp. 3–51). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Katz, N., Baker, E., & Macnamera, J. (1974). What’s in a name? A study of how children learn common and proper names. Child Development, 45, 469–473.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leonard, L. B. (1989). Language learnability and specific language impairment in children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 10, 179–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindner, K., & Johnston, J. R. (1992). Grammatical morphology in language-impaired children acquiring English or German as their first language: A functional perspective. Applied Psycholinguistics, 13, 115–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loeb, D. F., & Leonard, L. B. (1991). Subject case marking and verb morphology in normally developing and specifically language-impaired children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 34, 340–346.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maratsos, M. P., & Chalkley, M. A. (1980). The internal language of children’s syntax: The ontogenesis and representation of syntactic categories. In Nelson, K. E. (Ed.), Children’s language: Vol. 2. New York: Gardner Press.Google Scholar
Markman, E. M., & Hutchinson, J. E. (1984). Children’s sensitivity to constraints on word meaning: Taxonomic versus thematic relations. Cognitive Psychology, 16, 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, J. F. (1981). Assessing language production in children. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Papandropoulou, I., & Sinclair, H. (1974). What is a word? Experimental study of children’s ideas on grammar. Human Development, 17, 241–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thal, D., Marchman, V. A., Stiles, J., & Aram, D. (1991). Early lexical development in children with focal brain injury. Brain and Language, 40, 491–527.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed